Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

”This...”

”Oh no...”

Also witnessing how Xuan Hao slowly explained the mistakes that had been made during the forging process of the dagger, the few who had harbored hope for him to not be skilled when it came to blacksmithing, all simultaneously shared a look of despair. Understanding that there was no chance of them progressing to the next stage of the competition.

”What is this? Did you just randomly toss in a few spiritual herbs into water and turn it into a soup of some sort? Look, there are even unrefined chunks of spiritual herbs floating around inside of it… Disqualified!”

”A transcendent grade spiritual metal grinded and used as coloring for an artifact of this quality? Disqualified… And pray you don’t run into any of the other blacksmiths again after leaving the city…”

”This pill… Shouldn’t this be a healing pill? But… As a poisonous pill, it gets 37 points.”

In the end, it didn’t take long before a large number of people were eliminated, while a few who thought they would get disqualified ended up just barely making it through to the next round through a stroke of good luck.

Even then, the time it took for Xuan Hao to go through each of the participants one by one, still ended up taking around half a day. Making some among the audience rather happily listen, while a large majority of the ones who had returned in hopes of things becoming interesting began to groan painfully after listening to Xuan Hao methodically going over each of the creations presented by the participants.

Luckily, this time around, it didn’t take that long and Elder Song quickly jumped in following Xuan Hao returning to his seat. Explaining the next part of the competition that would be focused on testing the group of participants alchemy or blacksmithing knowledge. Having them compete among each other on different subjects and eliminating those who fail to keep up with the rest in terms of knowledge.

Of course, this did end up favoring those from the Star Shattering Sect, as the knowledge available to someone from a large sect would inevitably far surpass that of a wandering cultivator.

So, with that in mind, Elder Song made sure that the elders of the Star Shattering Sect wouldn’t end up competing with the outsiders and instead had them compete between each other. In turn, making the ones competing feel grateful towards him and the Star Shattering Sect, as they understood that this was them making sure that they didn’t try and oppress them with their background to win the competition.

”Another… Boring challenge…”

”Aren’t these kinds of competition supposed to be more interesting…?”

”Perhaps… The Star Shattering Sect is trying to make this as boring as possible? You know, trying something new.”

To no one’s surprise, the second challenge didn’t make the audience members the slightest bit happy, as it didn’t take more than a few minutes for the place to once again clear out of those not interested in alchemy or blacksmithing. Once again leaving behind the group of eager wandering blacksmiths and alchemists who were overjoyed at this new development, as it would get them a much-needed opportunity to learn more about all kinds of spiritual herbs and spiritual metals that they didn’t have any information on beforehand.

Because of this, outside of the wandering blacksmiths and alchemists that decided to stay behind, there were also a few wandering cultivators who understood the value of this information and remained to listen in.

After all, even though the alchemy and blacksmithing knowledge shared might not be that valuable to someone like them, the information on different spiritual herbs and metals was, as it could directly help them identifying something valuable if they happened to find a spiritual herb mentioned today that they had no idea about at the moment.

Along with that kind of attitude and under the tight watch of Elder Song and a few other elders of the sect, the competition proceeded smoothly without running into any problems along the way.

Following which the competition smoothly proceeded through third, fourth and fifth challenge of the competition over the next week. Ending up with 10 people by the end of the second week of the competition.

Among the remaining 10 participants still left were both Bai Ning and Qing Yi, who had singlehandedly dominated their respective part of the competition. Showing off the brilliance of the Star Shattering Sect in the process.

Of course, even with them around, there were still quite a few of the wandering alchemists who had ended up showing off and had managed to exceeded expectations and beat some of the elders from the Star Shattering Sect in the process.

In the end, outside of Qing Yi, Bai Ning and the elders of the sect, there were two wandering cultivators who had managed to make it all the way to the top ten.

Unfortunately for both of them, they were both skilled in the art of blacksmithing and ended up having to face off against Bai Ning in the final part of the competition where two winners would be chosen, one among the blacksmiths and one among the alchemists.

By far, facing off against Bai Ning could be considered the worst possible fate for these two wandering blacksmiths, as they essentially stood no chance against this single-minded person solely focused on the Dao of Blacksmithing.

At least if they had ended up facing off against Qing Yi, they would have stood somewhat of a chance, as she wasn’t entirely focus on comprehending the Dao of Alchemy like Bai Ning was focused on the Dao of Blacksmithing.

Even then, as the five blacksmiths competed with each other, the two wandering blacksmiths managed to achieve the rather surprising ranking of number two and three. Surpassing the other two elders of the Star Shattering Sect left among the blacksmiths in the process.

As for the alchemy part of the finals? Qing Yi managed to win it without much suspense, as the elders of the sect participating in the competition were still far from reaching her current level of alchemy. Possible only her master and Pei Yang had surpassed her inside the sect at this point in time.

All things considered, this still ended up going in a way that both Xuan Hao and Elder Song had not expected, as the sect ended up forking up some rather precious rewards for the second and third place winners of the blacksmithing part of the competition. Rewards that was originally intended to be used on nurturing their own blacksmiths.

Unfortunately, there was not much they could do about this, as the rewards for the competition had long since been announced by the sect itself in an attempt to attract a large number of people to either watch or join the competition.

”Can’t waste the sect resources like this! I will definitely have to recruit those two and have them join the sect to avoid losing the precious resources of the sect to outsiders!”

Even then, Elder Song wasn’t saddened for long, as he soon focused his attention on recruiting these two talented wandering blacksmiths to join the sect. Seeing it as the best way to recover the resources that had been handed out by the sect and ensure that they stayed within the sect itself.

Seeing this, Xuan Hao decided not to say anything.

Instead, he focused his attention on the different people among the audience who had come to watch the finals. Trying to see if he could get lucky enough to spot the spy that might have been sent out by the Blue Sea Empire.

But… Finding no success and once again finding himself admiring the skillful disguise methods of the Blue Sea Empire. Even though he was able to perfectly hide themselves from someone like himself, Xuan Hao soon focused his attention on a few of the more talented people among the audience members. Noting them down for Elder Song to recruit after he finished getting those two wandering blacksmiths to join the sect.

Not just to enhance the strength of the sect by adding more disciples to the now rather large number of disciples inside the sect, but also to give the proper impression that the Star Shattering Sect had indeed held the competition to recruit disciples.

In a sense, the combined aspect of the competition that tested both blacksmiths and alchemists at the same time was to attract even more people, something befitting of an ancient hidden sect when it came to their recruitment practices.

Hopefully, after everything was said and done, Xuan Hao just sincerely hoped that the Star Shattering Sect would end up being viewed as an ancient hidden sect by the Blue Sea Empire.

After all, this was the main reason why he had participated in the competition in the first place, as Elder Song would have been more than enough to take care of the competition under normal circumstances.

Not to mention, the competition would almost certainly have been more exciting and different if it wasn’t for the fact that they had tailored it around how those ancient hidden sects were rumored to hold their competitions when trying to attract talent for a specific profession like alchemy or blacksmithing.

If not for that, Elder Song would have definitely tried his best to make the competition a bit more entertaining for those who had come to watch the competition instead of solely focusing on testing the participants and trying to pull out all of their talents.

Though good for measuring the talents of those participants and even the audience members, it was not the most exciting thing to watch for those not proficient in alchemy or blacksmithing…